


schooltown follies

by interstellarstrut



Category: Gravity Falls, Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-05-26 04:02:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14992325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interstellarstrut/pseuds/interstellarstrut
Summary: two guys with two strange pasts wind up at the same college. based on the idea that otgw takes place in the seventies.





	1. it's gonna get weird

**Author's Note:**

> this is horribly self indulgent but there's so many fics with wirt and the twins that i wanted to write one with wirt and ford! especially considering things in the show that point to it happening in the seventies, which would put wirt and ford roughly around the same age.
> 
> update: we're back! with three new whole ass chapters! since i named the whole fic after an otgw episode, i wanted to name the chapters after songs off the gravity falls soundtrack. sorry if it's too goofy. i hope you enjoy!! please let me know if you do!

Backupsmore wasn’t exactly Wirt’s first choice — it wasn’t totally not on his list, but he had set his sights on Princeton, for its architecture program. He wasn’t able to get the scholarship he needed, though, and Backupsmore seemed to be the next best option. Close-ish to home, affordable, mostly bug-free dorms; what more could you ask for?

A lot, he decides when he walks on campus. It’s not particularly _terrible_ — the grass is cut, there’s some flowers, a modestly sized quad — but there’s nothing striking about it, either. It’s overwhelmingly plain. The dorms have a similar effect, but with Greg’s help, he sets on decorating his side of the room as soon as they set down the moving boxes. He passes off his The Black Turtles poster to Greg to hang wherever he pleases and sets to work on arranging the various cuckoo clocks — only after making sure they’re turned off, of course. The last thing he wants is his new roommate to be woken up in the dead of night by a fake bird.

Speaking of, where is he?

Wirt casts a worried look out the window. The sun is setting, and he’s starting to wonder if Stanford just isn’t going to show up. Maybe he decided to go elsewhere last minute, or maybe he’s not going to college at all —

“Greetings!”

The voice nearly makes Wirt jump out of his skin, and he turns around to see a brown-haired man at the door, carrying a large stack of books. He leans around the frame and squints at the nameplate, adjusts his glasses. “Ah… Will?”

“I...it’s Wirt, does it say — ?” He goes to double check the name, and sure enough, it reads “Will.”

Stanford walks to the unclaimed far side of the room and sets the books down on the nightstand. “Well, we’ll have to get that fixed. Nice to meet you, Wirt. I’m Stanford Pines, but you can call me Ford.” He holds his hand out, and Wirt shakes it.

Greg watches their hands in wide-eyed wonder. “Whooooa! Six-fingered handshake!”

“ _Greg_ — !”

“Ah, it’s fine,” Ford says, and he holds up both of his hands for Greg to see. “I’m used to it.”

“I suppose we should leave you two be.” Wirt’s mom turns around from hanging up his clothes before Greg can potentially insult his new roommate. “It was nice to meet you, Ford.”

“Be sure to call us soon. Don’t be a stranger,” says Greg’s dad.

“I’ll find you if you don’t, brother o’ mine! Don’t underestimate — !”

Greg’s words are cut off by Wirt ushering him out of the room after his parents. “Yeah, sure. I’ll visit soon, Greg.” Greg turns and gives him a pointed look; Wirt grins and ruffles his hair. “It’s a rock fact.”

Satisfied, Greg bounces on his toes and gives Wirt a hug. “Good! See you soon!”

He shuts the door after final goodbyes from his mom and Greg's dad. Ford has taken on the task of filling the bookshelves along his side of the room. Wirt eyes the titles: various editions of _New Scientist_ , along with _Anomalous Phenomena_ , _Gravity Anomalies in Idaho_ , _Men, Ships, and the Sea_ —

“Brothers, right?” Ford says, his back still to Wirt.

“Oh,” Wirt laughs, a bit nervously. “Yeah. Greg’s still a kid, so he’s pretty excitable. You...you have a brother, too?” He glances over at the posters Ford already hung up: Nikola Tesla, Carl Sagan, a landscape of the galaxy with the word “EXPLORE” on it. No pictures of family, at least not yet.

“I don’t know if I’d call him a brother. His name’s Stanley.” His voice is clipped, and Wirt takes the hint to not talk about it. He goes to his wardrobe and starts hanging up what his mom left on his bed.

“Where are you from?”

“Glass Shard Beach. You?”

“Cape May. I think we went to Glass Shard sometimes for vacation,” Wirt says, fumbling with dress pants his mom insisted he bring that refuse to stay on the hanger. “Not to play twenty questions, but what are you studying?”

“I like twenty questions.” Ford turns around with a smile and leans on his desk, apparently satisfied with the order of his books. “Science! Physics, specifically. And maybe engineering. I plan to get at least three PHDs in…” He tilts his hand in an “ehh” gesture, “...five years?”

“At _least?”_ Wirt looks over his shoulder, baffled. “Wow. Alright. I’m going for a Bachelor’s in Architecture and a minor in music.” He gestures to the clarinet case on his bed.

“I won’t keep you awake studying if you don’t keep me awake playing.” Ford grins, and Wirt laughs in response.

“Deal.”


	2. remember those times

Ford’s interested in anomalies of all sorts, Wirt soon learns. He pores over sightings of cryptids, from Bigfoot to the alien big cats (“Not actually aliens!” he was always quick to say), and the book of gravity abnormalities that Wirt spotted on his shelf before. He’s more than happy to talk about it whenever Wirt asks; even if he doesn’t understand much of what comes out of his mouth, Ford becomes so animated while he talks that Wirt doesn’t mind. He asks questions when he can, which sends Ford down a whole other spiel (“Well, nobody’s really sure! But I think — ” ).

He grows to trust his ideas and theories. So when there’s a lull in the room following Ford closing his textbook for the night —

“Have you heard of The Unknown?”

Ford turns around in his chair much quicker than Wirt was hoping he would. He flashes him a grin and tucks his chin between his thumb and forefinger. “There’s a lot that’s unknown, Wirt. What bit are you referring to?”

“No, I mean… It’s a place. That we call The Unknown. So I guess you… haven’t heard of it?” Wirt shifts to the edge of his bed so his feet hang over the side.

“No, I can’t say I have. What is it? How do you know about it?” He leans forward in his chair, gets that glint in his eye that Wirt recognizes from their quantum mechanics class that he has the unfortunate task of taking.

“Well, it’s, uh, a place. That… Greg and I went to. And you know, it’s really not going to make a lot of sense and you’re going to think I’m crazy and made it all up and I’m rambling without even getting to the _point_ here, right.” He drags his hands down his face and takes a deep breath. It still unnerves him to talk about, all these years later. But when Ford straightens up in his chair, just a bit, and stops looking at Wirt like he’s an experiment about to react, he feels a little calmer.

“If it’s something that’s hard to talk about, you don’t have to tell me about it. We all have things that we’d rather not share.” Ford shrugs. “It’s alright.”

“No, no, it’s not that, necessarily. It’s a mystery, and that’s what you’re all about, isn’t it?” He cracks a smile. “I’d like to just… hear what you have to say about it. You have good ideas and everything.”

Ford puts a hand near the notebook on his desk. “Do I need to take notes?”

Unsure if he’s joking or not, Wirt lets out a hesitant laugh and assures him that he probably shouldn’t.

And so he launches into the tale.

He tells Stanford everything about The Unknown, from the black train to the skeletons to a song about potatoes to The Beast and everything in between. As with anything he learns about, Ford doesn’t hesitate to interject questions, though they’re not always ones Wirt knows the answer to. His brow is furrowed by the end of it, and he stays quiet for several minutes; Wirt can almost see the pieces of information being scattered across his brain, spread out so everything can be examined at once.

“Well, truthfully, you were dying, weren’t you?” His hand has moved from being tucked under his chin to stretched out, gesturing at Wirt. “Both of you?”

“Ah… yeah.”

“So this — you called it The Unknown? — must be some sort of… not afterlife, particularly, more like a limbo. And both you and Greg remember it, that’s fascinating! I mean, it could’ve been a folie simultanée of sorts, of course — but the bell!” He fumbles through the papers on his desk, eventually pulls out an unlined sheet, and starts writing on it. “That’s the key to this. It raises more questions, though: what all can come back from that world? Would the object still possess the same abilities as it did there; as in, could the bell still command a spirit? Exactly _how_ does a soul come back once it crosses over, what’s that success rate?”

Wirt tries to catch a glimpse of what he’s working on without much result. “Wish I could tell you.”

“Wirt, I believe you and your brother may have been a rare case. If what you say is true, then…” He looks up from his paper with a frown. “I’m excited over it now, but that sounds like a ghastly fate. I wonder if all souls travel through there at some point or another…” he muses, and his pen resumes scratching at the paper.

Wirt flops back onto his bed and stretches his arms over his head. It’s been a while since he’s let himself think of The Unknown, and he studies the bluebird cuckoo clock above his head as he mulls over everything once again. Sometimes, it’s hard for him to shake the feeling that he never really left, like he just imagined the paramedics and Sara and everything. It’s hard to ground himself, then; everything in those woods felt real (albeit bizarre), so what’s stopping this from being a continuation of it?

He stands up, abruptly enough that he gets lightheaded, and walks to Ford’s desk once he regains his balance. He can see the paper, now: sketches of what must be Enoch and The Highwayman and the lantern, next to some sort of disorganized flow chart with tiny cursive that he can’t quite read in this light.

“Stanford.”

He didn’t really need to say his name, seeing as Ford was already looking up at him. He answers, though, a simple “yes?”

“Am I here?”

It sounds stupid as soon as it leaves his mouth, and he squeezes his eyes shut with a sigh. Ford doesn’t seem to think so, and he reaches up to put a hand on his shoulder. “You are indeed.”

Wirt rubs his face again once Ford drops his arm, and he blows air out through his nose in a semblance of a laugh. “There’s my deep dark secret, I guess. Thanks for listening to me. I never really… actually talked about it with anyone except Greg.”

Ford taps his pen to his temple with a grin. “You’ve piqued my interest about it, so I’ll be here if you ever get a hankering to talk about your dark past.”

“I think it’s your turn next. You _did_ say we all have things we don’t like to talk about.”

It was mostly a joke, but Ford’s expression shifts to something he can’t quite place, and he turns back to his desk. “It’s not a nice story.”

“Neither is — ” Wirt cuts himself off when Ford holds up a hand, his gaze trained on the window.

“Wirt, what day is it?”

“Uh… Tuesday?”

His pen falls from his hand, and he starts hastily gathering his belongings. “It’s _Wednesday_. The sun’s coming up. We talked all night.”

Wirt groans, suddenly feeling the heaviness in his body. He looks dismally from the rays of light just barely peeking through the trees outside to his bed.

“Don’t even think of laying back down — ”

“I _know_ , I know.”


	3. don’t start un-believing

“Whaddya reckon’s taking him so long?” Fiddleford McGucket’s knee bounces erratically under the table, threatening to launch the books and mugs of coffee on it across the study room.

“I’m not sure,” Wirt says, and he frowns over his architecture textbook. He had saved it for last in their study session with Ford, since it was what kept his interest most out of his subjects. But now, his attention is out the door — more specifically, out the door, down the stairs, across campus to the dean’s office. Ford had been summoned there likely no more than forty-five minutes ago, but it feels like he’s taking his sweet time.

And between the coffee and Fiddleford’s KBPS, his nerves are absolutely shot.

He’s about to take a walk through the library to calm down when Ford busts through the door. Fiddleford stands up, his knee bouncing faster until he manages to stop it completely. “The heck did they need you for?”

“My thesis! Remember reading it?” His eyes are bright, and he’s barely containing a wide smile.

“And you staying up probably dangerously long to write it.” Wirt mocks gazing into the distance, reminiscing. “It passed?”

“Not only did it pass, but I got a grant! A research grant!”

“No kidding! What for?” Fiddleford shuts his book and leans over the table, eyes following Ford as he starts pacing the room. He raises one of his hands as he speaks and studies his six fingers.

“I’ve always stuck out because of my hands. They’re what sparked my interest in all things weird, and I want to study those things further. I have a few places in mind that I could travel to, but…” He looks up at the two of them, a bit of a disbelieving smile on his face. “The grant is enormous. I could go virtually anywhere.”

“You better get looking!”

He’s already on it, Ford assures as he starts shoving his books in his bag. Wirt pauses at the door to ask if Fiddleford wants to join them on the walk back to the dorms, but he shakes his head.

“I’ve gotta work some more on these computer designs. The prototype had a few, eh… Rough spots. The next one will be a shoo-in for sure!”

“If anyone can fix it, it’s you,” Wirt says. He holds the door for Ford, who’s still wrestling with his bag as he wishes Fiddleford good luck.

It’s dark, they realize once they get outside. They walk quietly for a moment, though the excitement causes the air around them to buzz. Ford looks up at the night sky; it’s not great viewing, thanks to the brightly-lit campus, but a few stars can still be seen shining. “Maybe I should go where I can see the Milky Way.”

“Have you seen it before?” He follows his gaze upwards, but nearly falls over a crack in the concrete, so he quickly focuses back on where he’s walking.

“It’s been a while. I’d see it sometimes on the beach, or out in the woods, when I stayed out late with… When I stayed out late.”

 _With my brother_ , Wirt knew was the intention. He doesn’t push, though, and shrugs when Ford asks if he’s seen it, too.

“No. I didn’t go on as many daring adventures as you seemed to,” he laughs. “Whenever I went out late it was for a football game or something. Way too bright to see anything good in the sky.”

“It’s never too late to see it for the first time,” Ford points out. “We live under this same sky our whole lives, yet it always has something amazing to offer. It’d be a shame if you missed out on it.”

Wirt elbows him. “Then invite me out to wherever you end up going once you get settled. We’ll see it together.”

He looks to him with a smile and nods. “Of course.”

They traverse the stairs to their room, where Wirt unceremoniously dumps both his bag and himself on his bed. Ford goes to the map he has tacked up on his side of the room, chin in hand. He turns to Wirt and gestures back to it. “Do I really have any decision to make here?”

He sits up to see better; there’s various pins across the map, but they’re concentrated around Washington and Oregon. “Not unless you want to go out of the US, guy.”

“Maybe someday.” Ford chuckles. “The events are centered around a town called Gravity Falls.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Neither had I! It’s stayed hidden, I think. But it seems to be a hotspot for abnormal activity.” He sits on his bed, mirroring Wirt’s posture.

“So… You’re all done here, aren’t you? With school, I mean.”

“There’s no reason for me to continue on,” says Ford. “You won’t have a roommate who keeps you up all night any more.”

“Oh, come on,” he laughs, “it was fun. If I didn’t like talking to you, I would’ve requested a room change a _long_ time ago.”

“Do you think they’ll put you with someone else?”

“Maybe. I only have a year left, so they may not bother.”

The room falls quiet, almost uncomfortably so. Neither had really realized how much their friendship had grown until now, with Ford moving to the other side of the country. Wirt’s excitement for him is shadowed by that bittersweet notion — but his thoughts are interrupted by a frustrated “agh!” from Ford, who has moved back to his map.

“It’s only Oregon,” he says, holding a ruler up to the distance key and tracking it from New Jersey to Oregon. “Just under 2,800 miles. It’s not like I’m going to forget you or Fiddleford. Letters can travel that far, as can we. Stop looking so sad.”

A bit baffled, Wirt starts laughing. “I’m not looking _that_ sad! Am I? You’re insane if you think we’re not coming to see you whenever you send us your new address.”

“‘Greetings from Gravity Falls!’” Ford waves his hand through the air, as if displaying an invisible sign. “You’ll both get a postcard.”

His laughter subsiding, he holds his hand in the air as the universally understood offer of a high-five.

Or high-six, he thinks, as Ford leans over and accepts.

“We’ll be waiting on that postcard, Pines.”


	4. we'll meet again

Some thirty-odd years later, Wirt is driving cross-country to Roadkill County, Oregon. He can’t help but think back to his second trip there, sometime after he visited Ford following graduation. The lab had been turned into a tourist trap, and while the man who proclaimed himself as “Mr. Mystery”  _ looked _ like Stanford, he didn’t act like him in the slightest.

Nor did he remember Wirt.

He wrote it off at the time; they were both getting older, and Ford probably just forgot about him. Fiddleford, too, as he hadn’t heard from him in a very long while. He had all but forgotten the incident until a letter came to his doorstep a week ago. It appeared to have gotten thrown around in the mail some thanks to his address change, but it was from Ford. He apologized for the extended radio silence and for any possible interactions with “Stanford,” in quotation marks. He didn’t offer any explanation, only an invitation to come visit him and Fiddleford — and his brother, and his niece and nephew. 

So for some godforsaken reason, he’s making the trip again. He still has some level of trust in Ford after all this time, he supposes. And he’d be lying if he said he didn’t miss him. 

The lab still has a sign up proclaiming it the “Mystery Shack,” though the falling “S” makes it seem more like a hack. Wirt idles in his car for a moment, suddenly feeling anxious and wishing Greg hadn’t been too busy to not come with him. He then realizes how suspicious he must look, just sitting in a parked car, so he hurriedly unbuckles his seatbelt and gets out, attempting to walk casually to the front door. 

He only gets one knock on the door before it’s flung open, but he has to look down quite a ways to see who answered. A teenage girl stares up at him, and there’s a flash of confusion on her face — whoever she was expecting was clearly not him. She quickly covers it with a wide smile. “Oh, hi! Are you one of Grunkle Stan’s friends? Hold on, I’ll get him.”

He can’t even get a response in before she shouts down the hall, “Grunkle Staaaan!” A gruff “If it’s a salesman, I ain’t buying!” follows.

_ Grunkle? _

“I’m, uh, not here for Stan, I think,” Wirt interjects as she opens her mouth to yell again. “I’m here to see Ford — Stanford Pines?”

“Oh!” she chirps and pulls him inside. “Why didn’t you just say so?”

It’s a rhetorical question, apparently. “I’m Mabel. Grunkle Ford’s here somewhere, maybe up in his room — ”

“And who’re you?” A man comes around the corner — Stan, based on the voice from before. 

“Oh, I’m, you know, nobody really — I mean!” Wirt holds his hands up and takes a breath. Man, road trips are hard on the mind. “I’m — ”

“Wirt!”

There’s a voice he recognizes. Ford pokes his head in around Stan, followed by a boy who looks the same age as Mabel. “Sorry, I didn’t even hear the door open. Dipper and I were catching up on our game.” The boy beside him — Dipper — waves a hand in greeting. Ford nudges Stan. “Wirt is my old roommate. I told you he’d be dropping by.”

“Whoa, you two went to college together? You knew Grunkle Ford when he was at peak nerd?” Mabel looks genuinely surprised, and he can’t help but laugh.

“Yeah, we did. I don’t know about that last part, though.”

She looks ready to support her argument when Stan cuts in, moving back towards the living room. “Come on, let’s leave those two to their weird reminiscing talk.”

“Wait, not yet! I want to join in on their old man bonding! Look!” Mabel reaches out and holds up Wirt’s arm. “We’re sweater buddies, it was meant to be!”

“Both of you realize that’s not summer-appropriate wear, right? Like, do you know how easy it would be for you to get heat stroke?” Dipper asks, and Wirt gets the feeling that it’s a conversation he’s had with Mabel more than once.

“At least I don’t wear a dorky vest,” she says, but any further response is cut off by Stan pushing them to the other room, muttering something about family TV time.

Ford looks to him with a smile. “Shall we go outside or would you rather talk in here?”

“We can head out,” he says, though he hears an “aw!” from Mabel when the door opens. 

Ford leads the way, walking briskly towards the woods. He tilts his head back to him as he walks. “The drive wasn’t too bad, was it?”

“Not terrible. Rained a bit, found some cool monuments, you know. Boring stuff.” Ford slows a little, and he matches his pace to his. “Are Dipper and Mabel your niece and nephew?”

“They are! Great-niece and great-nephew, technically. And just great.”

“And Stan is your brother; he looks just like you.”

“I forgot you hadn’t met him before now. Or, well…” Ford pauses. “You have, if you came to the Mystery Shack within the past thirty years.”

Things finally click in place in Wirt’s mind. “Oh, that’s who he was! I thought you had just forgotten me.”

“Of course not! Stanley, ah… Well, it’s a long story.”

Wirt gives him a pointed look. “I didn’t come all this way for nothing.”

“It’s hard to believe, is all,” says Ford.

“You’re forgetting that time I nearly fell into a cursed door because I didn’t believe your warning. Try me.”

He gives him a challenging grin, which slowly dissipates as he looks to the sky, searching for words. “It started with these symbols I found in a cave…”


End file.
